In many growing operations (e.g., a nursery, greenhouse, farm, etc.), workers may fulfill various requests for inventory items by locating a particular inventory item and loading it onto a vehicle for delivery to a requesting customer. In some instances, multiple requests for a plurality of inventory items may be grouped in a particular order destined for delivery to a common location. The plurality of inventory items may be distributively disposed throughout, for example, a field of a growing operation such that a worker may expend substantial time and energy harvesting or otherwise collecting the plurality of inventory items needed to fulfill the particular order. Moreover, the plurality of inventory items for the particular order may not be readily loadable on to a vehicle in an economically efficient manner (e.g., loading too few inventory items onto a vehicle) due in part to the dynamically variable geometry of the living inventory (i.e., live plants).
It is often desirable to load a vehicle with inventory in an economically efficient manner. Traditionally, this involved an ad hoc determination, for example, by a worker at a loading dock, which specified the placement of inventory items in a vehicle on a just-in-time basis. Because it may be difficult for such traditional methods to account for a multitude of parameters, the loaded vehicle may contain a substantial amount of surplus shipping space, which may cause a growing operation to “ship air” at great expense.